


Songs of a Boy Without a Name

by nocturneblack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Gen, POV Gendry, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, gendry centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 20:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9341006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocturneblack/pseuds/nocturneblack
Summary: Five short peaks into the life of a bastard, the life of a blacksmith, the life of a knight.A story about Gendry, with a good dose of Gendry/Arya.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A quick, short one-shot I wrote to get out some of my Gendry feelings.

**Mother**

No one has memories from when they were a babe, but sometimes Gendry has dreams about his mother that are so vivid he thinks they must be memories. They come out of the depths of his mind every so often, flickering behind his eyes briefly when he sleeps.

Long, tousled blonde hair, just out of reach of his small hands; eyes that were kind but dull; the smell of ale clinging to her clothes— it all flashes before him in brief glimpses, only to be forgotten when he wakes.  

When his eyes are open and he tries to remember he can never recall the right features, can never compile the image of her face.

By the time he is grown the dreams have stopped, and he hardly ever thinks about the woman who was his mother and a tavern girl, the woman who had died before he was old enough to remember what had even caused her death.

He is glad that never had to see first-hand what his mother had to do to keep them fed. When he does think of her he thinks that it is best that she died when he was a babe, rather than after he’d been old enough to love her and to understand that she loved him.

 

**Bastard**

The other children without mothers and fathers, the ones like him, were dirty. Their faces were streaked with dirt and grime, their hair greasy and like straw. Their little hands and feet were black with filth, and it didn’t take long for Gendry to realize that he was just as dirty as they were.

When he left the orphanage and started his apprenticeship with Tobho Mott the word “dirty” became replaced with the word “lowborn” in his mind. His master had explained to him the many differences between lowborn and highborn, and had told Gendry that as a lowborn bastard he was at the bottom of the ladder.

When he grows older Gendry becomes grateful for his lessons in social order. He understands not to speak to the lords and ladies that enter Tobho’s shop unless spoken to first, and he learns to use titles like “milord” and “milady.”

But when he is a bit older still he learns that “bastard” has more meanings than Tobho had led him to believe. Highborns and lowborns alike hurl the word at him like a filthy insult, like being born a bastard made him less than the scum stuck to their boots. He supposes that he believed that for a while— that he was lesser, that he was marred.

 _Bastard_ brands him like a hot iron, leaving a visible mark for all to see. Even after _she_ tells him otherwise.

“My brother is a bastard and he’s the best man I know.”

It takes more than that to convince him. A mountain’s worth of her words chip away at the shame inside of him.

If she can love her bastard brother then maybe he can be worthy of her love, too.

 

**Steel**

Smithing was never confusing to Gendry. Even when he first started out it made perfect sense to him. Heating steel to make it malleable, pounding it into the proper shape with a hammer, dunking blades in water to cool and harden. It was a precise process that resulted in the same outcome every time.

Blacksmiths were not involved in the affairs of court and royalty, and that makes Jon Arryn’s and Ned Stark’s questions all the more confusing to him. And then he had been wrenched away, sent off to the Night’s Watch with nothing to show for himself besides his bull helm.

All he had ever had to be was a smith, and it is all he knows how to be.

He smithed in King’s Landing on the Street of Steel and he smithed at Harrenhal to protect his life and to protect _hers_.

She had wanted him to smith for her brother, and that had made sense until Lord Beric tells him he could be a knight. A bastard knight is certainly higher on the ladder than a bastard smith. A knight could look after a lady better than a smith could.

He kneels on the cold ground as Beric sets his sword to his shoulders, and when Gendry stands he feels like he finally has something that is his.

 

**Father**

Jon Snow is the first person to tell Gendry that Robert Baratheon was his father. For the majority of his life he’s had people tell him that he bears a striking resemblance to the deceased stag king, but conjecture and truth are two different things.

A king’s bastard.

Does that make him lowborn or highborn?

He is unsurprised to find that at the age of twenty it hardly matters to him anymore. He had just fought off an army of White Walkers; whether or not he should be saying “milord” or “my lord” isn’t exactly at the top of the list of things on his mind.

Jon Snow seems to think it’s important.

“I can legitimize you, if you want.”

Gendry Baratheon.

What a foreign and strange sounding thing.

He’d been a blacksmith and a knight. Did he want to be a lord? A king’s son?

Being a knight had been enough for him. It’d been enough to save his skin in their last battle, enough to save hers. She's the one always telling him that being lowborn doesn’t matter, that it was good enough for her. That’s what she said to him when she kissed him before they faced the Walkers.

But is it good enough for her family?

He wonders if her bastard brother will let her wed a bastard. He wonders if to marry a Stark he has to be a Baratheon.

 

**Arya**

He tells her of her brother’s offer and she scoffs.

“If you become a Baratheon we would have to live at Storm’s End.”

He wonders faintly when they became a “we,” when she started thinking of herself as part of a unit.

“Not to mention that the Queen would perceive you as a threat.”

He hadn’t thought of that. Didn’t they all realize how ridiculous that was? A bastard blacksmith sat on the Iron Throne.

Arya tells him not to be legitimized. He remembers words that a young girl with chopped hair and a child’s sword once told him:

“All the best boys are bastards.”

She had tried to prove it to him over and over. It was strange how he’d realized she loved him before she told him so. It's evident in the way she speaks to him, in the way she trusts him, in the way she takes his hand in hers at random, and the way she kisses him.

Who else had ever loved him?

Perhaps his mother, long before he could remember. Never his father. Never any other woman. Here was the one woman telling him he was worth something, and yet still he wondered if he was worthy of being loved by her.

He asks if he is worthy, if her family will let her wed him. She smiles, cradles his face in her hands, and calls him stupid.

“The man who saved my life more times than I can remember asks if he’ll be able to wed me.”

She brings his face closer to hers.

“The man who my brother called a hero in the battle that saved the realm asks if he is _worthy_ of me.”

She kisses him, softly, so different from the things about her that are so hard. She pulls away slightly, her words ghosting over his lips.

“Well. What do you think?”


End file.
